Let’s try something different. This is an open thread. Feel free to use the comments to pick and discuss a particular topic of your own choosing.
Or ask me a question or two, and I’ll see if I can write a blog entry about it in the next few days or so.
(Yes, I’m starting to run out of ideas. Or maybe it’s just that winter is a pretty slow time of year for many folks’ barefooting.)
Ahcuah 
Hello.
You have one of the best “run/barefoot/minimalist” blog out there. Keep your good work.
Best regards.
What? No report from the latest battle for access to the “[shod] People’s House”? No scenic tours (with great pictures) of state and national parks? No reports on the latest medical (or anthropological) studies on gymnopedie? I know doing any writing on a strict schedule is taxing (I have a deadline tomorrow), but I hate to see Ahcuah go to a longer periodicy or [horrors!] vanish all together. Regardless, thanks for what you have done.
As story from last year – nothing ever came of it, but I figured I’d share in case you’re interested. (October 2012)
Typically, after school hours are over and their chores are done, my children like to go to the nearby city park down the street to play before dinnertime. I used to go with them, but lately we’ve been letting the older kids just take them all down there. The park is not even one kilometre away and they are always just a fifteen minute walk in case it starts to get dark or in case dinner is ready.
This time, there were going to be some neighbourhood football games going on and they were expecting to meet some of their friends for dinner at the concession stand. My wife sent them all down there to play with the instruction to return before dark. I was at work trying to get a project out the door, when my wife called and told me to get down there immediately.
I was a good forty-five minutes away and headed down at a swift but still reasonable pace. When I was about five minutes from my home, my wife called again to tell me to come directly to the park.
As I pulled in, I saw a Park Ranger’s car, a local city police squad car, and two county police cruisers. I parked my car and walked to where my wife was standing and as I approached, my children ran toward me and started hugging me. My wife made a slicing motion across her throat and I took the hint to keep mum.
Not long after I arrived, the law enforcement vehicle cars began to pull away and soon I was left with my family to try and figure out what happened. From what I could gather from the locals and my children, it all started when a woman asked my eldest daughter where her shoes were. Not suspecting anything, my daughter replied, “We don’t wear shoes.”
This troubled the woman, so she left the premises and phoned the police. When the police arrived, they began asking my children questions individually, apparently about school and other such things. One of my children gave an officer our address, and a man who knows my children then called my wife to tell her that she needed to get there right away.
When my wife arrived, the police began interrogating her. She asked what law had been violated, but the cops insisted that no such law was broken but that they preferred children be with a grown-up. The police were unable to give a clear charge, but one rather obnoxious female officer began prodding my wife with questions in an attempt to make her look like a neglectful mother. “You let your children walk to the park without shoes? That is child neglect!” “I saw your child asking for food – is it because you don’t feed them that they are so hungry?” (My kids went there to eat dinner with their friends.)
Finally, one county police officer stated that a police report was being filed and that DFACS (Department of Family and Child Services) would be notified. He then asked permission to come to our house to inspect it and observe the inside, the quantity of food we had, and how many beds, &c. My wife refused. Shortly after, I showed up and rounded up my children and we all headed home for our Friday dinner. None of us had much of an appetite.
As my children reconstructed the story for me, I realised that the only real fear I have about my children playing outside isn’t the odd threat of a malicious stranger or wandering pervert. My only fear is law enforcement who think that children shouldn’t play outdoors for some reason. And in spite of the fact that there is no law that children cannot go outdoors, here were are, about to get a visit from the most despicable state department in existence to see if we are fit parents for the “crime” of letting our children play outside in their natural unshod state.
I’m baffled. I’m angry. I’m frustrated. Who ever heard of such a thing?
Anyway, in the meantime I’m off to get a lawyer I can’t afford to defend myself against the non-existent crime of letting my children be children.
God bless the USA, land of the free.
Dave, thanks for sharing that. It’s not the first time, either. There was something similar that was written up on the Free-Range Kids blog that I wrote about in Free-Range Bare Feet.
Nothing ever came of that, either, aside from giving caring parents needless worry (as for you, too). And of course the other particularly insulting part of it is the “Guilty until Proven Innocent” attitude that comes with it.
So while there are some overly-concerned busybodies out there, so far at least, those in authority haven’t started taking kids simply for being barefooted.
Dave,
My heart bleeds for you. My husband and I were just recently raked over the coals by the same agency. The circumstances were a bit different, but it was still the result of nosey neighbors who didn’t think we knew how to raise a child. And yes, as always, people are “guilty until proven innocent”. We have degenerated to such a low.
How about a reply to the recent study on Vibram 5 fingers posted on runnersworld.com talking about a very gradual transition is required to go to minimalist shoes? Looks like a lot to talk about on that.
With spring coming soon, hopefully, how about something on how to promote going barefoot? I am not a parent, but I know several from church and other places. Every year, especially in spring and summer, I see them scold their kids to put their shoes back on when they kick them off.
I would love to be able to educate them that it’s better for their kids, and them, to just skip footwear altogether. Unfortunately, living in a small town, I don’t know how to do it so it would come out well and not be perceived as having a fetish or something.
Bob, thanks for that link to your post about another shoeless victim of the police.
In our case, my wife and I waited for days for the DFCS to show up. We prepped our house, coached the children, had a lawyer on retainer, &c. Nobody ever showed up. Finally, we concluded that when the police report made it to the desk of somebody who had any brains, they tossed it aside as being without merit.
Gabby, I’m pretty happy that the problem never advanced beyond the threat of the cops, but it goes to show that nowadays it seems you can’t be too careful. I never would have thought that seeing a barefoot child on an autumn day in Georgia would warrant a call to the police, but it seems I’m wrong.
Isn’t it hard to run a daily blog? Meanwhile I’m having pleasantly intensive experiences, with sunny weather, temperatures of 6 to 8°C and still plenty of snow around I give my feet at least half an hour of walking each day. The weather looks as if I could keep this up for the rest of the year!
@incu: “Isn’t it hard to run a daily blog?”
Well, I’m not looking for a pity party, or a praise party (see first two comments), but there is a fair bit of effort in producing these. Decent ones can take more than an hour, particularly after I try to research them trying to provide “added value”. And some days I really don’t feel like writing. I actually have about 5-6 ideas in my head, but they’d require even more thinking and researching.
Today I started on a more complicated one, gave up, and then I just threw up a quickie of mostly pictures (took only about half-an-hour), and it turned out to be fairly popular.
Maybe some time I will do a blog entry on the behind-the-scenes mechanics of this . . .
Dave,
I’m sorry that you had to go through that nightmarish ordeal. It comes to show you that people need to mind their own business unless they see for themselves that a child is threatened. It seems that our society has sunk so low that parents can’t even be trusted with their own kids, even with a simple thing like walking barefoot in a park. It’s too bad the police didn’t offer you and your family and official apology. Those snoopy busybodies are a main reason why society is going down the way it is. Down here in Florida, I see a handful of kids walk around barefoot outside and no one says a word.
Here’s an article from CBC.CA about the U.K.’s “Naked Rambler,” whose got himself in trouble for back-packing naked in public. But take a look at the photos, just below the ankles. Is he entirely naked?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/03/01/naked-rambler-arrested.html
Bob,
Do you care to research if the Roma people (gypsies) of old (even as late as the middle of the 20th century, but the custom was waning at the time) did go barefoot all year round, even in the snow, or it’s just a myth? http://english.svenko.net/costume/album.htm
I´ve got a hard question. Do barefooters have a special duty to promote a barefoot lifestyle just because we are barefooters?